On June 23, Professor of English Chris Foss presented a paper titled “Ann Yearsley, Earl Goodwin, and the Politics of Romantic Discontent” at the 25th meeting of the British Women Writers Conference, held this year at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Foss Presents Paper at British Women Writers Conference

Foss Contributes to Essay Collection

Chris Foss Presents at Inaugural Conference in Italy

Autism in Contemporary Film, Literature and Life

Disability in Comic Books and Graphic Narratives. Eds. Chris Foss, Jonathan Gray, and Zach Whalen. Literary Disability series (series editors David Bolt, Elizabeth Donaldson, and Julia Miele Rodas).

“Fin-de-Siècle Indian English-Language Poetry: British Imperialism, India, and the Irish Question.”

“Individual Redemption through Universal Design; or, How IEP Meetings Have Infused My Pedagogy with an Ethic of Care(taking).”

"Building a Mystery: Relative Fear and the 1990s Autistic Thriller." Kidding Around: The Child in Film and Media. Eds. Alexander N. Howe and Wynn Yarborough.

"Oscar Wilde and the Importance of Being Romantic." Wilde Discoveries: Traditions, Histories, Archives. Ed. Joseph Bristow.

"Emerging from Emergence: Towards a Rethinking of the Recovery Story in Nine Contemporary Nonfiction Autism Narratives."

"'We, who happier, live / Under the holiest dispensation': Gender, Reform, and the Nexus of East and West in Toru Dutt."

"'There is no god who can keep us from tasting': Good Cannibalism in Hélène Cixous's The Book of Promethea." Scenes of the Apple: Food and the Female Body in 19th- and 20th-Century Women's Writing.

"Jameson, Conrad, and the Dialectic of Utopia and Ideology."

"Toward an Imaginative Politics: The Convergence of Theory and Practice in A Philosophical View of Reform." A Brighter Morn: The Shelley Circle's Utopian Project. Ed. Darby Lewes.

"Abjection and Appropriation: Male Subjectivity in The Good Soldier."

"Shelley's Revolution in Poetic Language: A Kristevan Reading of Act IV to Prometheus Unbound."

Welcome to the University of Mary Washington, a public arts and sciences institution in Fredericksburg, Va., that attracts intellectually curious undergraduate and graduate students in search of rigorous academics. The university – located midway between Richmond, Va., and Washington, D.C. – provides a rich array of academic, research, internship, leadership, and recreational opportunities that not only train students for the real world but allow them to interact closely with faculty members.

University of Mary Washington

Chris Foss, Professor of English, earned a Ph.D. in 19th-century British literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an M.A. in literature from Northeastern University, and a B.A. in English (with secondary education certification) and Spanish from Concordia College-Moorhead, Minn.

Dr. Foss is the author of more than 20 scholarly publications and 40 academic conference papers. His particular emphases within his specialty area include Toru Dutt, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Oscar Wilde. He also has secondary expertise in disability studies, with an emphasis on autism studies.

His co-edited book, "Disability in Comic Books and Graphic Narratives," is scheduled for publication in Feb. 2016 with Palgrave Macmillan, an essay collection for which he also coauthored the Introduction and wrote an individual chapter titled “Reading in Pictures: Re-visioning Autism and Literature through the Medium of Manga.” 

His most recent publications are “Fin-de-Siècle Indian English-Language Poetry: British Imperialism, India, and the Irish Question,” which appeared in the July 2015 number of English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, and “Individual Redemption through Universal Design; or, How IEP Meetings Have Infused My Pedagogy with an Ethic of Care(taking),” which appeared in Caring For, Caring With: Pedagogical Responses to Living with Disabled People, the October 2015 special issue of Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture.

Dr. Foss’ essay “‘He is so ugly that he might have made the King smile’: Disability and Freakery in Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Birthday of the Infanta,’” the end product of his Spring 2015 sabbatical, is currently being circulated for publication.  Also, in October 2015 he accepted an invitation to join the editorial board of Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies (Liverpool University Press/Project MUSE), one of the two most important venues for scholarly work in the interdisciplinary field of disability studies.

British Victorian Novel

Oscar Wilde

British Literature Since 1800

British Romantic Literature

British Romantic Women Poets

British Victorian Literature

Disability and Literature

Representations of Autism

Pedagogy (and Practice) of Care

Foss and Whalen Co-edit Essay Collection

Foss Presents Paper Celebrating the Work of Claudia Emerson

Foss Speaks to Columbia University Seminars

Foss Invited to Join Editorial Board

Foss Publishes Article on Pedagogy in Pedagogy

Foss Publishes Article on Indian English-Language Poetry and the Irish Question

Foss Presents Paper on Oscar Wilde

Foss Presents Paper at International Conference on Romanticism

october-is-disability-awareness-month-contact-a-umw-expert-if-you-are-covering

Professor of English

Professor of Art History

History of Disabilities

Pigments

Color Sellers

Art History of Renaissance Italy

Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-century Italian Painting

Sellers of Artists’ Materials

History of Art in Venice

One in four Americans lives with a disability, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At the University of Mary Washington, it’s one in eight.

 “With those sorts of numbers, it’s mind-boggling [that] disability doesn’t have more automatic inclusion when people think about diversity,” said UMW Professor of English Chris Foss.

As the Americans with Disabilities Act’s 30th year and October’s Disability Awareness Month shine a light on one of the country’s most underrepresented groups, so does a new UMW course. Offered for the first time this fall, Intro to Disability Studies (IDS) delves into the 21st-century experience of a diverse population, exploring cognitive, sensory, mobility and other differences as just as essential to the human condition as gender and race.

The 16-week course fans out across disciplines, examining disability throughout the lifespan in historical, political, social and other contexts. Years in the making, the class is team-taught by faculty and staff – from art history, education, English, historic preservation, psychology and the Office of Disability Resources (ODR) – who’ve poured their time and passion into the topic in hopes it gains traction.

“It took a lot of meetings, discussion and work on Google Docs to pull this together,” said Professor of Art History Julia DeLancey, who borrows from her first-year seminar, “The Beauty Difference Gives Us,” to deliver an IDS session on how disabilities affect artists’ work.

 If you are a journalist looking to cover Disability Awareness Month and the Americans with Disabilities Act’s 30th year, then let the experts from the University of Mary Washington help with your story.

Dr. Julia DeLancey and Dr. Chris Foss are available to speak with media about this important topic – simply click on either icon to arrange an interview today.



October is Disability Awareness Month - contact a UMW expert if you are covering

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